The Oct. 15, 2009 file photo shows German writer and Nobel price laureate for literature Guenter Grass during an interview with journalists of the Associated Press in the library of Steidl publishers in Goettingen, Germany. Grass is sharply criticizing Israel amid tensions with Iran and what he describes as Western hypocrisy over Israel's suspected nuclear program. In a prose poem published Wednesday, April 4, 2012 in German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the 84-year-old Grass highlighted Berlin's recent sale to Israel of a submarine able to "send all-destroying warheads where the existence of a single nuclear bomb is unproven."

Photo: Jens Meyer, Associated Press

The Oct. 15, 2009 file photo shows German writer and Nobel price...

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The Oct. 15, 2009 file photo shows German writer and Nobel price laureate for literature Guenter Grass during an interview with journalists of the Associated Press in the library of Steidl publishers in Goettingen, Germany. Grass is sharply criticizing Israel amid tensions with Iran and what he describes as Western hypocrisy over Israel's suspected nuclear program. In a prose poem published Wednesday, April 4, 2012 in German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the 84-year-old Grass highlighted Berlin's recent sale to Israel of a submarine able to "send all-destroying warheads where the existence of a single nuclear bomb is unproven."

German Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass labeled Israel a threat to "already fragile world peace" in a poem published Wednesday that drew sharp rebukes at home and from Israel.

In the poem titled "What must be said," published in German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Italy's La Repubblica among others, Grass criticized what he described as Western hypocrisy over Israel's own suspected nuclear program amid speculation that it might engage in military action against Iran to stop it building a suspected atomic bomb.

The 84-year-old Grass said he had been prompted to put pen to paper by Berlin's recent decision to sell Israel a submarine able to "send all-destroying warheads where the existence of a single nuclear bomb is unproven."

"The nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace," he wrote. His poem specifically criticized Israel's "claim to the right of a first strike" against Iran.

Grass also called for "unhindered and permanent control of Israel's nuclear capability and Iran's atomic facilities through an international body."

Israel views Iran as a threat to its existence, citing among other things some Iranian calls for its destruction and fears that Iran aims to produce nuclear weapons.

Grass didn't mention those calls, which have been made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but obliquely referred to the Iranian people being "subjugated by a loudmouth."

Israel is widely believed to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons but has never admitted it, pursuing instead an official policy of "ambiguity." The left-leaning Grass established himself as a leading literary figure with "The Tin Drum," published in 1959, and won the Nobel Prize in 1999. He urged fellow Germans to confront their painful Nazi history in the decades after World War II.

However, his image suffered a bruising when he admitted in his 2006 autobiography that he was drafted into the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the Nazis' paramilitary organization, in the final months of World War II.